My name is Nguyen Van Hoang and I am a freshman at McKinley High School. I come from Vietnam and I have been here for two years. But the question is how and why I got here? I’m here not because I want to come here. I’m fine with my life at Vietnam and with my friends there. My father got a job here and my family and I had to move to Hawaii.

The night before we went, I felt very nervous, and I could not sleep. My neighbors came to my house and asked me a lot of questions. I felt very confused, and I didn’t know how to answer their questions. I ignored their questions and played some video games on my laptop. We went to the airport at 6 a.m. the next day and started our flight at 9:45 a.m.

We got to Hawaii 17 hours later. My father took us to his house. That time, we didn’t live in Chinatown yet. My family  and I stayed at a place that I didn’t know about; we stayed there for two months. In two months, I didn’t do anything except watch One Piece, a Japanese manga series, and play games on my father’s laptop. We moved to Chinatown after two months. I went to school a few days after moving to Chinatown and that was called Central Middle School.

Central Middle School was different than Truong Trung Hoc Co So Ngoc Lien, a school that I went to in Vietnam. CMS started class at 8 a.m. Students switched classes when the period ended and their math level was lower than THCSNL. The homework that teachers gave was not a lot. Students could bring their phones to school. Students ate lunch at school and went home at 2:15 p.m. Students would pass if they got an A, B, C or D in their class.

Truong Trung Hoc Co So Ngoc Lien started class at 7 a.m. When the period ended, students stayed in class and waited until the teacher for the next class to come. The math level was very high. Teachers gave students a lot of homework, and they gave homework to students everyday. Students could not bring their phones to school. Students did not eat lunch at school. Students went home at 11 a.m. and they ate lunch at home. After that, students had to go to an afternoon class at school and it usually ended at 4:25 p.m.

At this school, teacher would not give students an A, B, C, D or F. To pass, students had to pass two big tests at the end of semester one and two. At the end of the semester, they had to do five tests in one day. They had to remember five study guides for each subject all at the same time.

The first time I went to CMS, I was scared because I didn’t know English and no one was there to help me. After one day, I met four Vietnamese students and we became friends. Their names were Trong, Trung, Tung and Duy. They were always ready to help me when I asked.

We usually played together. We went to Kukui, sat there and talked or borrowed a ball and played basketball. Trong and Tung didn’t want to play basketball, so they sat there and watched me and Trung play with other guys. That was the first time I played basketball so I was very bad. Sometimes, we didn’t want go to Kukui so we all went to Tung’s house. On the weekends, we went to the beach. Sometimes, we went to the movie theater and watched some new movies.

In the two months of summer, I went to summer school and did a lot of fun things with my classmates.

When summer ended, the new school year came. After ten days at school, Trong told me that a Vietnamese student  moved to CMS. His name was Phat. He was a funny guy. He always told us jokes and made us laugh. We went to Kukui again, but that time we did not just sit there and talk. We played a game call “chasing.” That game was very fun. Sometimes, we played killer with Trong’s card. I felt like eighth grade was much more fun than my seventh grade. In eighth grade, I did a lot of fun things with my friends. I thought that was the best time to come.